The Hooded Man

Rome. 1600. On this very spot, a pyre is built. A man is brought out, in chains, stripped naked, tied to a stake, then set afire.

That man was Giordano Bruno, the great philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer. His discoveries about planetary movements turned the known world of the sixteenth century upside down: the Sun, and not the Earth, he declared, was in the center, and all the planets revolved around it.

Now, his haunting statue rises in accusation of the Inquisition that sentenced him to the pyre.
​
In the middle of the lively piazza Campo dei Fiori (Flower Square), Bruno emerges from the mists of time. I examine the folds of his cape, the hood that hides a willful and defiant face, his crossed arms holding a book. I feel the past is still present. Two centuries co-exist on this very spot.

---